


Real Life

by Heliosthetroll



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Karkat hates being a leader, Nothing real serious though, some pride bullshit gets thrown in there because I can't help myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 22:05:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15301026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliosthetroll/pseuds/Heliosthetroll
Summary: Karkat is just watching the beta kids mess around with their god tiers when suddenly it all goes wrong and he wakes up somewhere he was never meant to be.





	Real Life

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you have no fucking clue what just happened. One moment you’re with Jade, John, Dave, and Rose and those assholes are fucking around with combining god tier powers and shit and the next moment you’re blacking out and waking up who fucking knows where. As you look around you don’t recognize anything around you. You’re in some fucking alleyway and it’s heavily graffitied and really dirty. You didn’t think any of the alleys in Earth C looked this run down at least not yet. You’re sitting on your ass so you get up and brush yourself off, trying to figure out what the fuck happened and where the fuck you are. You conclude pretty quickly that you have no fucking idea where you are and start to head out of the alley to see if you can get a better look around. At least maybe then you can figure out which kingdom you ended up in. Only when you step out you don’t recognize anything around you at all. There’s humans of all different kinds everywhere so at first, you assume that it’s the Human Kingdom which is annoying considering you all had been at the Troll Kingdom before but whatever. Then you notice that none of this landscape fits with what you remember any of the kingdoms look like. There’s huge buildings all around you along with some smaller ones but anything as big as the taller ones would still be in construction or at least new back in the Human Kingdom or at any of the kingdoms really but this all looks relatively old compared to all the brand new stuff back on Earth C.

Where the fuck are you?

And how do you get back?

You get a few looks and you try to figure out what to do next but no one talks to you or even gives you much thought. You start walking down the street just so you don’t feel like you aren’t doing anything. You look around as you walk but you don’t see anything that you recognize. Then you look in a window that one of the buildings next to you. At first you don’t even recognize yourself but sure enough, it follows you meaning it’s your reflection. You’ve got the same messy black hair but there’s no nubby horns sprouting out of it. Your clothing is the same minus your sign and your skin a dark brown instead of grey. And your eyes are just like a human’s with the irises being a bright red reminiscent of your blood color. Your nails and teeth aren’t sharp anymore either and instead are dull and rounded. You’re human. You’re one hundred percent a human through and through.

What the fuck happened to you?

First, you wake up somewhere you don’t at all recognize with humans everywhere in much bigger numbers than they should be yet and then you look at yourself and discover that you too are human. What the actual fuck is going on right now?!

You stop walking as you stare at yourself in shock and people glare and grumble at you as they run into you or push you aside without a second thought about you. It’s jarring and strange. Not quite Alternia where even a midblood could get killed for standing in a highblood’s way but not quite Earth C either where if you stopped in the middle of the street people would stop and ask you if something was wrong and try to help you. It’s right in the middle of those two extremes and it puts you on edge almost as much as the rest of this does and makes you more than a little bit worried about your safety. 

The lighting of Earth C has never bothered trolls like Alternia’s had so you don’t even notice it had been daytime until the sun starts to set as you wander around, trying to find out what to do and how to get back and where you even are. Sure enough, though the sun sets and the moon starts to come out. You have no idea what time it is but figure that since from what the other humans have told you some of the more unsavory humans tend to go outside more in the night rather than the day when it’s more crowded you should try to find some sort of shelter for the night if you can. Maybe you can figure out what to do while you wait or even better yet you’ll pass out and wake up to find that this was all some crazy dream induced by the lack of soper on Earth C mixed with your lack of a normal sleep schedule ever since starting the game all that time ago.

At least you hope that this is all a dream. 

Boy, do you fucking hope this is a dream. 

You manage to spot a building with apartment written on the side which you remember Dave having mentioned at one point having lived in before so maybe you could find shelter there. The building is pretty big and really fucking tall so you figure they won’t mind sparing just a little space for you.

At least you hope they don’t.

The humans you knew got territorials sometimes, not anything like trolls did but still, and from the stories they told the lengths they went to keep their spaces private was actually pretty open by human standards because they know and trust everyone left alive after all the shit that went down so you weren’t so sure but gog did you hope that someone would be nice enough to let you stay.

You enter the building and there’s a few people milling about here and there but not many. The room is pretty empty of stuff, a few chairs and couches scattered about and a desk right across from the door with a person sitting behind it in a chair in front of a computer but nothing too fancy. If anything the place even looks a bit run down. After taking in the place you notice the person sitting behind the front desk has noticed you and is looking at you, seemingly a little annoyed that you haven’t come to state what you’re doing here to them or at least moved away from where you entered. Gog you must seem really out of place to these people, don’t you? You guess you’re lucky that no one has questioned you yet. Fuck how would you even begin to explain this? Hey I’m not a human I’m a troll and I came from a place called Earth C and I have no idea how I got here or how I turned into a human. Yeah, that’d likely get you in big trouble really fast.

And to top it all off if your growing hunch about all of this was correct then you got sent to some alternate timeline somehow on the original Earth in which trolls don’t exist therefore making you into a human.

Which means who knows how you’ll ever get back home if that’s even fucking possible.

You’re more and more doubting it is with every passing second.

But god do you hope there is some way for you to go home.

Yeah Earth C is your home what of it? It’s even more your home than your old hive ever could’ve been really. Even if you still do miss Crabdad a lot… Fuck. Now’s not the fucking time to be thinking about that.

You approach the desk and try your best to remember and use every human word that you’ve learned from your time with the humans during and after the game so you don’t sound completely insane. “I need a place to stay. Just for a night.” You feel so ridiculously weak and needy like this and you hate it. You hate that you have no idea where you are, what’s happened, or what to do. You hate that you are now relying on this person’s kindness for safety through the night. You hate that with one word this person could force you to spend the night out in the dangers of the outside in a human body. In a body so much more vulnerable and susceptible to the elements as well as other dangers. And not only were you in an unfamiliar body but an unfamiliar place too. You could be hurt and even killed so easily. Almost as easily as back on Alternia where if you made one wrong move you would be dead before you could open your mouth to scream. And not just because of your mutant blood even if that only made it worse. It makes your skin crawl with an unwelcome and really unwanted fear that you thought you would never have to deal with again once Earth C came into existence. At least not seriously. At least not as anything more than a gut reaction due to being raised to fear everything and anything. At least not outside of your nightmares.

But here you were completely at the mercy of this human who seemed to give less than zero shits about you and whatever situation you were in that made you come to them for help and shelter. And they readily crushed you like you were less than nothing to them. 

“I’m sorry sir but I can’t let you stay unless you are purchasing an apartment.” Your heart sinks. No no no no fuck no this can’t be fucking happening. What were you supposed to do now? Go out there and hope for the fucking best? You were screwed. Royally and massively screwed. 

You must have been showing your panic externally unintentionally because suddenly you feel a hand on your shoulder. You twist around instinctively and pull away from the contact, expecting a fight which only makes your panic rise. You freeze stock still at the sight before you though. The guy behind you looks almost identical to Dave in every way except for one thing. The only thing that makes you realize that this isn’t Dave and this isn’t some big elaborate prank by John that went too far.

His eyes.

He’s not wearing shades and his eyes are a deep brown rather than a piercing red that digs into your soul as they sweep over you, nervous at you being able to read every emotion they share easily for once. It makes you angry and calm all at the same time. Angry that you’re still trapped here with no idea how to get back and no one idea what to do but calm in knowing that none of the others saw your panic. You still get majorly insecure about that bullshit even if everyone has seen you panicked at one point or another at this point and everyone agrees that they have no room to judge you on when they all panicked during that shit show of a game too. You still sometimes feel as if you’re supposed to be in control of everything and know what to do at all times even if you aren’t a leader of anything anymore. It gets especially bad when the citizens of the various kingdoms act as if you and the others are gods which you guess you kinda are, some of you more literally than others, but still. The responsibility kills you sometimes.

The man has his hands up in surrender and he’s giving a nervous smirk that almost makes you think this could be this fucked up timeline’s version of Dave. But no. It’s just the universe deciding it needs to fuck with you more by sending you yet another reminder of your home that you so desperately want to get back to as soon as fucking possible. “Woah chill. My name is Jack.” The name sends all kinds of alarms off in your head and you have to remind yourself that this human is not the half dog god creature that hunted you for who knows how long honestly while you were trapped on the meteor. “I kinda noticed you were in need of a place to stay?” Honestly, you aren’t too keen on staying with this guy with Dave’s face minus the eyes and Jack’s name but you don’t see any other option at the moment. “Yeah? What fucking of it?” “Feisty. Ok. Look I’m getting vibes from you and I think I understand what happened to you and I think I can help you out.” You almost freeze up again before once again forcing yourself to recognize that this is not anyone who would have any clue at all what’s happened to you and that he’s mistaking this for something else. But once again you have to take this chance or else who knows what will happen to you. So you have to play along with him. “You’d be willing to house me? I don’t know for how long it’d be but trust me I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can be.” He smiles just a bit at you, just slightly tipping over the edge from smirk to smile. “Of course. Just one guy helping out another.” You look him up and down warily but give in. “Fine.”

He seems happy with that and honestly, you can’t help but think of this guy as a Dave and John lovechild of some sort with most of Dave’s physical features and some of his personality but a lot of John’s personality too. Like a country bum cool kid like Dave with all the goofy goober charm of John. It’s actually kinda calming to have something slightly familiar to cling onto even if you know this guy isn’t either of your friends. 

Either way he’s offered you a place to stay until you get this all figured out and you’ve accepted at least for tonight.

He leads you to his apartment but you don’t pay much attention to where exactly you’re going, your brain once again focusing on the weirdness of all of this and the worry of what you’re going to do and how you’re going to get home. You don’t pay much mind to the place and what it looks like either.

However, one thing that does get your attention is a few flags he has hanging up above the TV in his living room. Jack quickly sets about getting supplies to make you a bed on the couch while you get distracted by the fabric and the patterns of color on them. You recognize them from some parade thing the humans back on Earth C had practically demanded be done when it was deduced that the month at that moment back on the old Earth was June. Something about pride over something? You don’t know nor do you really give a fuck. It got the humans off your back when you trolls all allowed it and it was semi-interesting to watch even if you didn’t get like, any of it so you didn’t mind. During that parade, a few of them had carried flags like the ones hanging on the wall and you think you remember some of them had even painted the flags on their skin. One had a pale blue stripe followed by a pale pink one and then a white one before the pattern repeated. If you remember that one was supposed to mean a human who had switched their gender? You think? Then there was the rainbow which you think was supposed to be a human who liked the same gender that they were and finally is a flag you don’t recognize. First is a blue much like what John types in followed by the red you know all to well from your blood as well as Dave’s text and finally there is black and in the middle is some sort of symbol in yellow, almost gold. You don’t remember it from the parade at all and you have absolutely no fucking clue what it means either.

He must notice you staring because after setting down some blankets and pillows on the bed Jack speaks up. “Uh yeah, I uh… Have those up. Just hanging out.” You turn to him, half expecting a smirk like you know Dave or John would have when they made a pun like that but Jack just seems nervous. It strikes you as really weird until you remember that for some ungodly reason humans always made these kinds of things a really fucking big deal and in some cases would even straight up harm or kill each other over something as fucking stupid as that kind of thing.

Humans will always be the stupidest and most self-destructing species you know as well as the most confusing.

“Yeah. I know those two vaguely, you point to the rainbow and the more pastel themed one, but I don’t recognize that one.” He seems to relax greatly at your attitude over it. “Yeah, it’s one of the more obscure ones. Not many people know about it really. I’m super bad at explaining things and I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do anyway but if you want to look it up it’s called polyamory and it’s actually really nice.” You nod and it’s only then that it dawns on you that your phone is not in your pocket. Well shit. He seems to notice this and says that you can borrow his laptop while he uses his desktop to work. You think him once he returns with the device and he says his goodnight before leaving you alone in his living room for the night and once again you’re left with no idea what to do next.

So you do the first thing that pops into your head.

Research polyamory.

Because that’s a real fucking good use of your fucking time.

Ugh. Whatever. It’s like you have any other bright fucking ideas.

So you open the laptop and misspell the word about ten fucking times because fuck humans and their weird ways before finally getting it right. Turns out it’s a thing that basically means a human is attracted to more than one person in their one weird human quadrant at the same time which is somehow abnormal? Again, you will never understand humans. It’s some new info to flaunt to the other trolls when you get back at the very least. 

If you get back.

Fuck.

You really need to get back.

You toss and turn for hours, trying to figure out where to even begin on your search on how to get back home. You have no further answers when you finally end up passing out at around sunrise. 

When you feel a hand shaking you awake you half expect to look up and see Jack’s brown eyes but instead, you are met with three eyes and a pair of shades. Three very familiar pairs of eyes and a familiar pair of shades. You nearly start crying with relief at the sight of purple, blue, bright green, and pitch black staring down at you where you are starfished against the floor. “Woah Karks you ok man? Sorry. Didn’t mean to catch you in the crossfire there.” It takes you a moment to register and remember that they had been testing power combos before all of this. It almost makes you laugh that something so childish and so them and been the reason you’d been alone and trapped for what felt like an entire day but must’ve only been a little while here. “Just don’t fucking do that ever again and you numbskulls get down here and hug me, you fucking dumbass idiots.” They all seem surprised and confused by your words, well except for Rose that fucking all seeing witch, but you honestly don’t fucking care for once and they obey you anyway, half picking you up half leaning down to the ground to wrap you up in a big hug. After a while, you break away with the promise to explain all later. But right now you have some other friends to go find and be thankful for having so you aren’t completely alone with no idea what to do with yourself. Returning to all that can wait. It can wait a long fucking time.


End file.
